CBERS-2B, the third
Sino-Brazilian Earth resources satellite, will soon be fully
operational and ready to relay pictures back to ground control, a
top scientist said yesterday.
Launched on September
19, the monitoring satellite has passed its in-orbit tests, Tong
Qingxi, head of the Institute of Digital China under Peking
University, said.
He did not reveal the
exact date when the satellite would start its
operations.
The satellite can
provide 2.3-m-resolution images of objects on Earth, the highest
capability of any civil satellite in China, Tong said at the
three-day Digital China Development Forum 2007, which ends
today.
"Along with the
development of Earth-observing technology and its application, the
country has developed a certain level of emergency response
capability to important incidents at home and abroad," he
said.
Resources monitoring
satellites, especially high-resolution ones, are used to help
monitor natural disasters and large-scale incidents, Tong
said.
The two Sino-Brazilian
resources monitoring satellites, launched in 1999 and 2003, have
already demonstrated their value in recent years.
CBERS-1 provided
valuable information in June and July this year when flooding
occurred in the Huaihe River Valley, enabling the government to
draft flood-fighting measures, a report by the Beijing-based
China Space News, said.
The CBERS satellites and
another small monitoring satellite, Beijing-1, also monitored the
blue-green algae outbreak on Taihu Lake this year, providing data
on the degree of pollution over time.
The newspaper quoted a
government official as saying that with "the eye in the sky",
scientists can get a clearer picture of an incident and plan ahead
for future outbreaks.
China and Brazil plan to
launch two more monitoring satellites under the China-Brazil Earth
Resources Satellite program, the next in 2009.
(China Daily
December 18, 2007)